At least 100 people have been killed in a gun attack on a village in Nigeria’s north-central Benue state, Amnesty International Nigeria said on Saturday.
The attack took place between late Friday and the early hours of Saturday in Yelewata, a community in the Guma area of the state, the rights group said in a Facebook post.
Dozens of people are still missing, and hundreds were injured and without adequate medical care, it added.
Photo: AP
“Many families were locked up and burnt inside their bedrooms. So many bodies were burnt beyond recognition,” Amnesty said.
Graphic videos and photographs on social media platforms showed what appeared to be corpses and burnt down houses in the aftermath of the attack.
Udeme Edet, a spokesperson of the police in Benue, confirmed that an attack took place in Yelewata, but did not specify how many people were killed.
While it remains unclear who was responsible for the killings, such attacks are common in Nigeria’s northern region where local herders and farmers often clash over access to land and water.
The farmers accuse the herders, mostly of Fulani origin, of grazing their livestock on their farms and destroying their produce. The herders insist that the lands are grazing routes that were first backed by law in 1965.
Last month, gunmen, believed to be herders, killed at least 20 people in the Gwer West area of Benue. In April, at least 40 people were killed in the neighboring state of Plateau.
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